Talat Alpan AytekinSolution Development Specialist| Turk TelekomSisli, Istanbul, Türkiye
Today in a job interview, I was asked what would I do if the project target date needed to be shortened with the same resources. I suggested to decrease the quality but that was rejected. Does anyone have a proper answer? Saving Changes...
Al TaylorI.T. Contractor| IndependentWaterloo, Ontario, Canada
I think your answer was a valid one. Many years I read a great comment about quality by Grady Booch suggesting that quality was 'an economic concern'. I think his viewpoint suggests ur answer was valid. Saving Changes...
The old classic project management triangle is Time, Cost, and Scope with Quality at the center. Crashing the schedule requires more resources increasing cost. Running more items in parallel isn't necessarily feasible with the same resources and adds risk. If you're not going to sacrifice quality, you could de-scope the project. What isn't critical that might be cut? Another option is to figure out ways to be more efficient with the same resources. Saving Changes...
It depends on the project and the duration. If the resources are exempt and the time can be made up with a short burst of Over time that may be worth it but that is always risky as more overtime and rushed work can lead to burn out and faulty work. You can look at crashing the schedule some to run more things in parallel if possible which can increase risk. If this is doable you would need to ensure the Executive Sponsor is aware of the increased risk due to the steps taken to meet the new date. I would review the expected deliverables for what is critical for delivery and look for opportunities to shift some capabilities out if not critical to what the business is expecting at delivery. This would take close involvement with the Executive Sponsor to manage any changes in scope this may cause. Without changing the resources or quality there isn’t much else you can do.
Talat, touching quality is absolutely not a good option as far schedule compression technique crushing and fast tracking since you can not increase resources then you can not do crushing but fast tracking can be done with close monitor to risk increased, you can do resource levelling to optimise and also you can apply Lean management try to get rid of all Non value added activities, manipulate Takt time and reduce waiting time in process can help big time. Saving Changes...
HENDRY CHARLES.AAdditional Chief Engineer| BANGALORE METRO RAIL CORPORATION LTDThillai Nagar,Managiri, Tamil Nadu, India
Oct 24, 2018 9:18 AM
Replying to VASUDEV NARAYANAN
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What is the objective of asking you such a question? Consider such an event occurs while you are handling a project. Say, your Client demands you to reschedule the target delivery date then:
- How would you handle this event?
- What would be your stress level?
- How would you communicate with your stakeholders?
- How would you mitigate the risks?
Do you see it is a case study based approach? You will have to weave a story based on your experience on how you handled such an event. If you have not come across such an event during your tenure, then as well, you might not be considered for this position.
Such kind of questions would help the interviewer understand your strengths and other traits. I am hoping you would agree.
Quality is the only feature that would help you, your team, and your organization to sustain. How can you say that you would miss Quality targets?
Agree with some views here in reality definitely some how quality will be impacted but during interviews normally it’s about creative thinking and problem solving skills they are after because interviewer already know the outcome of the situation they just looking for more creative solutions. Sometimes bring straight forward in an interview comes at a cost, perhaps try and put yourself in the interviewers place you will understand. Good luck! Saving Changes...
Talat,
I agree with Keith Novak, consider reviewing the scope, can anything be removed from the work plan not affecting the quality, cost and scope, can work be performed in a different way that is more efficient.
If everything perfectly planned you can't change one without affecting the others. Saving Changes...
Although this question is rather old I would like to express my opinion about reducing the quality.
Reducing the quality in many cases is something that just the people that are doing the actual work can really do. For example in a software development project the developers could write the code faster resulting in less efficient code, more bugs and technical debt. The testers can skip tests or spend less time on each test resulting in more bugs not discovered. So overall the quality would decrease.
The question is how can the project manager reduce quality? Or how can he instruct the team members to do so? Honestly I don't think this is something easy to do on the project management side.
So if you want to reduce quality I think the only thing you could do is let the team know that the deadline has been shorten and that they have to compromise on quality in order to meet the new deadline. Then it is only up to the team and the tech lead/workstream leads to accomplish this. Sometimes this may not be possible or the team may refuse to do so. Saving Changes...
George FreemanThought Leader | Author | Architect| Florida, United States
Talat,
Sometimes you need to look at a problem/question from a different angle when the appropriate answers are unable to resolve a path to success. With that in mind, here are my thoughts:
A sponsor is normally responding to unanticipated politics when they demand a change in the completion date of a project that is already underway. When this occurs, a project manager needs to investigate the motivations behind the change event to understand its context within the organization, as a project-based political maneuver may be the answer.
We need to recognize that a PM is part of the political apparatus and as such, is fully licensed to use political maneuvers of their own to satisfy change events. For instance, if the triggering political event is not about budget, but about “meeting an edict to have something/anything delivered to the problem-space to prevent an exodus of resources.” Then an action, such as the following could be appropriate:
- Phase the project creating an early deliverable that is rolled-out via a controlled pilot.
The controlled pilot is doing the following:
- Satisfying the politics to have something in the problem-space that is visible and providing some degree of value.
- Confirming the value assumptions of specific processes/features through their use in the controlled pilot.
- Providing the time needed to create the full deliverable, possibly with a higher level of quality due to the feedback provided from the controlled pilot.
Interviewers in highly politicized environments want to know if prospective PM’s have “corporate street smarts.” So, when asked a question like the one you received, don’t be afraid to give multiple answers based on variant change event contexts. I published an article on corporate politics a couple of months ago called Use Project Plumbing to Manage Corporate Politics that provides additional information on the role of a PM in the domain of politics. Saving Changes...
